Yes, it was the missing box of guineas, come to light in the same extraordinary and unexpected manner that it had come before, without having been (as may be said) truly lost. When Miss Betty gathered her curtains off the dining-room table that March morning, a cumbersome and weighty heap, she had unwittingly gathered up the box with them. No wonder Sam Dene had not seen the box on the table after Miss Betty’s departure! It was a grievous misfortune, though, that he failed to take notice it was not there.
She had no idea she was not speaking truth in saying she saw the box on the table as she left the room. Having seen the box there all the morning she thought it was there still, and that she saw it, being quite unconscious that it was in her arms. Susan, too, had noticed the box on the table when she opened the door to call her mistress, and believed she was correct in saying she saw it there to the last: the real fact being that she had not observed it was gone. So there the box with its golden freight had lain undisturbed, hidden in the folds of the curtains. But for Hester Knowles’s defective window, it might have stayed there still, who can say how long?
Susan, no less scared than her mistress, stood back against the closet wall for safety, out of reach of those diabolical coins; Miss Betty, groaning and half-fainting on the three-legged stool, sat pushing back her cap and her front. The lawyer picked up the guineas and counted them as he laid them flat in the box. Sixty of them: not one missing. So Sam’s guinea was his own! He had not, as Worcester whispered, trumped up the story with Maria Parslet.
“John,” gasped poor Miss Betty, beside herself with remorse and terror, “John, what will become of me now? Will anything be done?”
“How ‘done’?” asked he.
“Will they bring me to trial—or anything of that—in poor Sam’s place?”
“Well, I don’t know,” answered her brother grimly; “perhaps not this time. But I’d have you take more care in future, Betty, than to hide away gold in old curtains.”
Locking the box securely within his iron safe, Mr. Cockermuth put on his hat and went down to the town hall, where the magistrates, after dispensing their wisdom, were about to disperse for the day. He told them of the wonderful recovery of the box of guineas, of how it had been lost, and that Sam Dene was wholly innocent. Their worships were of course charmed to hear it, Mr. Whitewicker observing that they had only judged Sam by appearances, and that appearances had been sufficient (in theory) to hang him.
From the town hall, Mr. Cockermuth turned off to Sam’s office. Sam was making a great show of business, surrounded by a tableful of imposing parchments, but with never a client to the fore. His old master grasped his hand.
“Well, Sam, my boy,” he said, “the tables have turned for you. That box of guineas is found.”